Gaming startup PlayFirst has raised $9.2 million to expand its casual gaming experience into mobile and social, raising its total funding to $31 million. The Series C round was split into $5.2 million of VC funding from existing investors Mayfield Fund, Trinity Partners, and Rustic Canyon ventures and $4 million in debt financing from Comerica bank.
PlayFirst was founded in 2004 and includes such titles as Diner Dash, Cooking Dash, Wedding Dash, as well as Chocolatier and Dream Chronicles, with the “Dash” triumvirate of games clocking in over 100 million play sessions to date. The company plans on using the financing to bolster its social and mobile gaming thrust, like just about everyone else in the entire sector is doing at the moment. → Read More
We haven’t heard much from PlayFirst since we covered the San Francisco-based casual gaming startup’s last funding round back in December 2007, but that doesn’t mean things aren’t moving for the venture-backed company.
Earlier this year, the startup inked a major deal with Big Fish Games and today it has announced that social game industry executive Mitali Pattnaik has joined PlayFirst as General Manager, Social Games. → Read More
Casual gaming startup PlayFirst has secured $16.5 million Series C in a round led by DCM that included original investors Mayfield Fund, Trinity Ventures and Rustic Canyon Partners. The new round brings total funding for PlayFirst to $26.5 million. San Francisco based PlayFirst was founded in 2004 and is focused on creating “shared casual game experiences around lasting original brands” that includes game play “rich in story and character.” PlayFirst titles include Wedding Dash, Chocolatier, and Dream Chronicles. Accompanying news of the funding was a new deal between PlayFirst and RockYou. Under the deal RockYou will distribute PlayFirst games through its widget and social networking service, with Wedding Dash the first title to be made available to Facebook users. PlayFirst sees the deal a way of tapping into the growing popularity of social networking sites as a gaming platform. According to PlayFirst, Wedding Dash has so far been downloaded 200 million times by users on PC, Mac, mobile and handheld platforms. CrunchBase Information PlayFirst RockYou Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
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